Leading Chinese Dissident Claims Freedom of Speech Worse than Before Olympics

He Weifang, a celebrated law professor and lead signatory to last year’s Charter 08 petition calling for democratic reforms in China, said the ruling Communist Party was currently engaged in a fresh wave of repressive internet and media censorship.

Even allowing for the Communist party’s highly conservative approach to any kind of reform – embodied in Deng Xiaoping’s famous phrase “Crossing the river by feeling for stones” – he said China was moving backwards on basic freedoms.

“The situation at the moment is that the river has deepened and the Party has got scared, so it has pulled back, fearing that the waters will rise up and drown them. In the last two years this pulling back from the water has got worse,” he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.